Vetted on a call by a Wave consultant, not scraped. £140,000 and above.
Currently contracting into applied AI at a large UK retail and commercial bank, fully remote, on a contract running to September 2026 that they can leave early. Before that they were a stakeholder-facing consultant inside the AI research lab of a global asset manager, owning delivery from discovery through proof of concept to production. Python, PyTorch, Spark, AWS and Docker, across agentic workflows, LLM applications, reinforcement learning and recommender systems.
Looking forDone with contracting and wants a permanent seat. Happy to travel, London or remote, and relocating to London within a couple of months.
How they came acrossKnows exactly what they are and aren't for. Problem discovery, proof of concept, MVP, getting it production-ready. Not pure research, and not long-run systems support, and they said so without being asked.
Python, PyTorch, Spark, SQL · C#, .NET, JavaScript, React · AWS, Docker · RAG, agentic workflows
6 employers over 12 years, split between engineering roles, a cofounded AI consultancy and consulting inside large financial institutions. Average tenure 2 years 7 months, longest stint 4 years 4 months.
Asking £220,000 at the top of this band off the back of contract rates, so settle the permanent number early.
Masters in artificial intelligence from a Russell Group university.
PhD in AI and a patent in explainable AI, then built the generative AI capability at an insurtech from nothing, hired the early team and set the technical direction. Shipped LLM workflow automation for tier-one European insurers, including pipelines that cut multi-week manual delivery cycles by roughly 80%. Still codes daily, and before this they shipped real-time fraud detection machine learning into major banks.
Looking forNot unhappy with the work, unhappy with the pace around them. They want a high-ambition culture where they own AI value end to end and keep coding alongside the leadership part.
How they came acrossDescribes themselves as more driven than the place they are sitting in, and the record backs that up. Flexible on the shape of the role, and no hard red lines when we pushed on it.
Python, SQL, PyTorch, scikit-learn, PySpark · RAG, LLM orchestration, agentic workflows, evaluation pipelines · MLOps, explainable AI
9 employers over 10 years, moving between academia, a cofounded feedback startup, a fraud detection scaleup and now an insurtech, with a lectureship in AI along the way. Average tenure 1 year 4 months, longest stint 3 years 9 months.
Average tenure of 1 year 4 months across 9 employers, part of which is academic and consulting posts running in parallel, but worth unpicking properly.
PhD in computer science specialising in artificial intelligence, at a UK university. Associate fellow of the Higher Education Academy.
M2 engineering manager at Meta, nearly 9 years in, currently running the team behind their AI data pipelines after a restructure. Distributed systems and platform engineering at that scale, on top of earlier hands-on years in iOS, C++ and mobile security. They were VP of R&D at a startup before the big-company chapter, so they have done both ends.
Looking forWants out because the work has stopped meaning anything to them. Looking for an early-to-growth stage company where they can lead and stay technically involved.
How they came acrossHad read up on the business before our call and asked sharp questions about where engineering leadership stops and technical depth starts. Measured rather than restless.
Distributed systems, platform engineering, AWS · C++, Java, Objective-C, C#, .NET · iOS, Android · AI data pipelines
7 employers over 23 years, from firmware and QA into mobile security startups, a VP of R&D seat and then nearly a decade inside one of the largest technology companies in the world. Average tenure on file is 1 year 10 months, skewed by early contract work.
Notice period is unconfirmed, and they are paid a lot. They know it drops in about a year when their 2022 stock refreshers expire, which is part of why they are moving now.
Masters in finance and banking.
Tell me which came closest and I recalibrate, then come back with 10 to 15 more inside 24 hours.
Show me the wider bank